The First Poets: Lives of the Ancient Greek Poets - Hardcover

"...solid, fascinating and detailed new book... this may be the best of this year's Olympic related publishing." (FINANCIAL TIMES MAGAZINE )

"The intention of this book is laudable - biographical and critical introductions to the Ancient Greek non-dramatic poets for the non-specialist reader - and Schmidt is always erudite and often engaging... Schmidt's enthusiasm is palpable and he certainly succeeds in fleshing out little-known writers from their fragmentary remains." (SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY )

"an important new study" (ROBERT MCCRUM OBSERVER )

"Every poet should buy a copy of this book to keep on their bookshelves. And, when the occasion arises, they should throw it at the cynic who may try to ignore or demean them." (THE INDEPENDENT )

"Engagingly knockabout... enjoyable stuff." (SPECTATOR )

"These poets are a gift to speculative minds... Schmidt's invocation of the Muses at the start of this project is beguiling. Here is a poet writing about poets." (THE TABLET )

"an accessible and fascinating overview of this flourishing literary period" (THE OBSERVER )

European poetry takes its bearings from a brilliant constellation of classical Greek writers whose lives (where they are known as legend or fact) and work (as it survives) continue to inform our writing and reading, even as the original languages, once central to a humane education, fall into disuse. The poets' stories, their loves, lusts and longings, the forms they devised, their rhetorical strategies, are vital in urgent ways - modern poets such as Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney have drawn inspiration from them. In this book Michael Schmidt writes about the Greek poets who have had most influence. The obvious ones Homer and Sappho gaiin from the presence of important lesser-known writers including the lyricist Anacreon, Theocritus the father of pastoral, and Hipponax. Where the lives are verifiable they are fascinating. Where true lives are shrouded in mystery, later writers and readers provide narratives of their own. We know more about Homer than Homer could ever know about himself. The classics have been alive for more than a millennium in our literature. The object of this book is to entertain, inform and create an awareness of necessary presences: these are poets out of whom our imaginations, like our literatures, are woven.